Death of Adolf Hitler - Aftermath

Aftermath

The first inkling to the outside world that Hitler was dead came from the Germans themselves. On 1 May, the Reichssender Hamburg, a part of the once-powerful Deutschlandsender, which had earlier sent transmissions across all of Germany, and indeed most of occupied Europe, interrupted their normal program to announce that an important broadcast would soon be made. Then followed an announcement by Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, appointed as Hitler's successor in Hitler's will, in which Dönitz called upon the German people to mourn their Führer, who died the death of a hero in the capital of the Reich. Dönitz stated that his only aim for continuing the war was to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. He added that as far and for so long as achievement of that aim was impeded by the British and the Americans, he would be forced to carry on Germany's defensive fight against them, as well. In the end, his tactic was somewhat successful: it enabled about 1.8 million German soldiers to avoid Soviet capture. However, it came at a high cost in bloodshed.

On the morning of 1 May, thirteen hours after the event, Stalin received the news that Hitler had shot himself. General Krebs had given this information to Soviet General Vasily Chuikov when they had met at 04:00 on 1 May, when the Germans attempted to obtain acceptable surrender terms. Stalin first demanded unconditional surrender and asked for confirmation that Hitler was dead. Stalin wanted Hitler's corpse found. In the early morning hours of 2 May, the Soviets captured the Reich Chancellery. Down in the Führerbunker, General Krebs and General Burgdorf committed suicide by gunshot to the head.

Later on 2 May, the remains of Hitler, Braun, and two dogs (thought to be Blondi and her offspring Wulf) were discovered in a shell crater by a unit of SMERSH tasked with finding Hitler's body. Stalin was still wary about believing his old nemesis was dead, and restricted the information that was publicly released. The remains of Hitler and Braun were repeatedly buried and exhumed by SMERSH during the unit's relocation from Berlin to a new facility in Magdeburg where they, along with the charred remains of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and those of his wife Magda Goebbels and their six children, were buried in an unmarked grave beneath a paved section of the front courtyard. The location was kept highly secret.

Different versions of Hitler's fate were presented by the Soviet Union according to its political desires. In the years immediately following 1945, the Soviets maintained Hitler was not dead, but had fled and was being shielded by former western allies. This worked for a time to cause western authorities some doubt. The chief of the U.S. trial counsel at Nuremberg, Thomas J. Dodd, said: "No one can say he is dead." When President Truman asked Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 whether or not Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, "No". However, by 11 May 1945, the Soviets had already had Hitler's dentist, Hugo Blaschke, and his dental technician confirm the dental remains found were Hitler's and Braun's. In November 1945, Dick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin (and later head of MI5 and MI6 in succession), had their agent, Hugh Trevor-Roper, investigate the matter to counter the Soviet claims. His findings as to Hitler's last days and suicide were written in a report and published in book form in 1947.

In 1969, Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky's book on the death of Hitler was published in the West. It included the SMERSH autopsy report, but because of the earlier disinformation attempts, western historians thought it untrustworthy.

In 1970, the SMERSH facility, by then controlled by the KGB, was scheduled to be handed over to the East German government. Fearing that a known Hitler burial site might become a Neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to destroy the remains that had been buried in Magdeburg on 21 February 1946. A Soviet KGB team was given detailed burial charts. On 4 April 1970 they secretly exhumed five wooden boxes containing the remains of "10 or 11 bodies ... in an advanced state of decay". The remains were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.

Elena Rzhevskaya, a former Soviet war interpreter, presented her testimony in the book Memories of a War-time Interpreter (Записки военного переводчика).